As local short-range passenger transport apparatuses, bicycles have particularly outstanding advantages including cheap price, convenience, fitness shaping, environmental protection, and energy conservation, and are one of indispensable and irreplaceable major transportation means in people's life today and in the future.
As the entire society sets a high value upon a low-carbon and green life environment increasingly, a public bicycle rental service has become a choice for widespread use of bicycles in all countries.
A back-end management system that communicates with parking piles is used to manage the affairs related with public bicycle rental. Usually, each bicycle is equipped separately with a bicycle locking device and a card reader that can read a card for bicycle rental and return (arranged on a stationary parking pile or rental pile fixed on the ground). During bicycle rental, the information in a bicycle rental card is read by the card reader, and thereby the bicycle is unlocked from the rental pile. Then, the renter can ride away on the bicycle. The back-end management system is networked with each rental pile, so that the renter can return the bicycle at any other rental outlet. To return the bicycle, the renter can place the bicycle to the locking position, so that the information in the rental card is read by the card reader again, and the bicycle is locked to the rental pile. Thus, the bicycle is returned successfully.
However, in the existing bicycle rental systems, the user information (e.g., fee deduction information) is transmitted via the rental pile to the back-end system. After the user rents a bicycle, the back-end system cannot learn about the condition of the bicycle rented by the user in real time, and cannot exercise control on the rented bicycle.
There is no satisfactory solution to the above problem yet in the prior art.